From a "socialist coup" to an avalanche of drugs: Fox News leads a smear campaign against Abolish ICE

As progressives continue to call for abolishing Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), Fox News and Fox Business are once again stepping to the forefront of the conservative media world in defending the agency and attacking its critics.

Multiple Fox guests and personalities have defended ICE by claiming that abolishing the agency will lead to “an absolute avalanche of drugs, guns, and M-19 (sic) members,” questioning anti-ICE protesters’ “loyalties,” and even predicting that the movement is “the evolution of a socialist coup” prepared to take over the country.

Host Jeanine Pirro: “We are witnessing the evolution of a socialist coup.”

Frederick County, MD, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins on Fox & Friends: Supporters of abolishing ICE “want open borders, they want no law, they want lawlessness,” so they target “a very effective law enforcement organization” in ICE.

The Five co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle: “It makes absolutely no sense from public safety perspective to abolish ICE. … And then what? The crossing guards after school will go over and police the border?”

Frequent Fox guest and NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch: “I have to question where [Abolish ICE supporters’] loyalties lie because … ICE is enforcing the will of the voters.”

Counselor to President Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway on Fox & Friends: “The call for the abolition of ICE … is the intersection of arrogance and ignorance.” Conway also maintained that it’s a “binary choice” between supporting ICE and “open borders.”

Former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Capri Cafaro on Fox & Friends: Calls to abolish ICE are “political gamesmanship,” and “having some sort of symbolic sacrificial lamb is not actually a solution.”

NRATV personality Dan Bongino on Fox & Friends: “Calls to abolish” ICE “will lead to the abolishment of the Democrat Party.”

The Five co-host Jesse Watters: “All these wacky things” Democratic New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supports, including that the country should abolish ICE, are “great for Republicans.” Watters also claimed that the movement’s spread was evidence of Trump “pushing the Democrats so far to the … left -- off the cliff.”

Host Tucker Carlson: “There was an ideological revolution on the left” that normalized calls to abolish ICE, without which “gang members, drug smugglers, child molesters, convicted murderers … could not be deported.”

Fox contributor and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Fox Business on the Abolish ICE movement: “We’re watching the radical wing of the Democratic Party gradually defeat the so-called progressive wing.” He predicted that “this is one of those issues that’s going to blow up and be enormously destructive” for Democrats.

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BobbyLewis
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Bobby Lewis is a researcher at Media Matters, where he has worked since February 2016. He has a bachelor’s degree in U.S. history from Ohio University. He previously interned at the Marijuana Policy Project.